One poster said that there is very little difference in damage taken when we are wearing a DD setup versus a tank setup. Now, I know my damage numbers increase in the DD setup, but I have paid little attention to the damage numbers I take when in either gear.

But I know that when I am wearing an all-out tank and defense setup, my VIT is 72+33 and my DEF is 395 before Protect bonuses. In DD gear, VIT is 72+7 and DEF is 350.

If possible, can paladins with a parser get some samples from your DD and tank setups to see if there is a real difference in damage taken in each of your setups? Don't add food, protect, defender, or sentinel, and use /war for your subjob.

Perhaps with some numbers we can determine if there is much of a difference in each.

I'd be willing to do it, but I have a small problem: Most of my old tanking gear is gone, and I don't really want to invest in much of it again. I'll look in to it and let you know, though - I'm almost to the point that I can compare Hauby to Gallant Body (level 57 right now, should be 60 in a day or two).

And, for the record, I favor the DD build. Started as soon as I could equip a Woodsman Ring and have since decked out mostly in DD pieces. Fortunately, my SAM and BLU get to enjoy the pieces, too.

What does need updated is the formula for Def how does having 999 def = the same as having 500 def.

What I do want cause im a greedy person is that Shield Reflect Dmg thing they was talking about. you teased me with it now give it to me!!!!

____________________________

ScarShiva wrote:

Disclaimer: There seem to be a lot of PLDs on this board who get upset when I have the nerve to suggest things like wearing Peacock Charm full-time in XP is preferable over Shield Torque, Parade Gorget is a macro piece only, Tacos are worthless, Loquacious Earring > Boxer's Mantle for PLD/NIN, Polearm is a crock of **** for PLD, and all other types of heresy.

I am so looking forward to stuffing my shield into something's face and actually hurting them with it. I hope they add pointy spikes to the front of all of them. And sluices for the goo to drain cleanly. And maybe a battery pack to shock their exposed flesh with. Oh, and covered with poison. That explodes. That would be cool.

We don't need an update. o.o ****Skip to the last paragraph if you don't want to read the first hand experience but just the summary of ideals mentioned*** This is how I feel about tanking in DD gear vs. 'turtle' or tanking gear.

When you try to excell to the best point of both builds, gear wise and performance wise. On a Turtle setup, you can reduce damage so much with koenig and valor pieces, along with defender and defense food, and specially now with protect 5. This setup works on hate in a unique way. See, typically a PLD holds hate via provoke, flash, and curing. When we reduce the dmg we take to such a low amount, we have less and less HP to heal back, thus less and less hate. When a melee wears no enmity yet pulls hate off a tank with 30 enmity and who takes next to no substantial amount of dmg, we can clearly see the hate potential dealing raw damage can create. This is where a DD setup comes into play.

With the most recent updates to shield, shield mastery etc; Shield has easily come ahead at being more important than any of our other defensive gear, traits, or abilities, in single performance. If you took away everything we had to tank and had to chose one thing, it would be shield because if its phenominal defensive capabilities. Thusly, if you enhance shield via shield skill+, and trade off some tanking/vit/turtle gear for a mix of enmity and accuracy/attack, you maintain slightly more damage taken while dealing more damage as the trade off.

The thing is. When you look at it you cannot look solely at how much extra damage we take in a DD setup. What you want to look at is how we stil manage to hold hate at the same rate, but with the DD build we are contributing to killing the enemy that much faster. In a game of parsers where one DD is 5% ahead of another DD and bla bla bla; Having your PLD increase his DD from 10% to 17 or 20% is definitely worth the trouble. I was in a greater colibri party a week and a half ago, setup was WAR WAR NIN PLD/war(me) DNC(74) RDM(73 or 74). My setup was: Ohat Haubergeon Spikex2 earring Company sword (used joyeuse as well, half and half because of the sheer difference in WS dmg between the joy and company) Parade gorget Woodsman Venerer's ring Amemeit +1 mantle Life/warwolf belt AFpants(yeah working on that) Af boots

No food. Overall, All of my melee were able to eat food as I held hate through the first TP move, after the first they usually died before the 2nd tp move went off. xD I had sanction refresh and between me and the DNC we main healed. I wasn't in a turtle setup, I was taking much more damage than if i had been in a turtle/tanking setup. The key is we were still able to sustain unhindered speed on chaining enemies, while I was contributing to faster kills than we would have normally.

****In the end, its all about faster exp. Kill faster and you get faster exp. Seems simple to me. =) But only for Merit parties. Everywhere I go I take a mix of tank and DD gear to apply individually to each situation. To answer your question, yes, there is a difference. There is no sense in wearing tanking gear without using the full works, which include food and protect, and defender etc. To measure damage taken between a DD gearset and a tanking setup without using protect or food or defender etc. is a waste of time IMO because you are 1.) half assing the tank setup and 2.) not taking in account the amount of damage output increase from the DD setup, thus both contributing to skewed results from whatever conclusion you're trying to get to. D:

[edit] woops forgot to add. I will parse my next merit pt and take both gear setups. Ill parse dmg dealt by the melees and dmg i take in both gear setups.[/edit]

I just hit 55. DD gear is not quite stellar at this level, but there's something for every slot if I want it. I'm maybe 20 points short of maximum defense in my hybrid build, and maybe 10ish VIT short, and a handful of AGI.

Ultimately this means mobs might hit for ~5 more points of damage. By far the biggest factor in damage taken is the food I eat. Just don't do silly stuff like wear a 0 defense headgear while eating meat or sushi.

Apologize in advance: Wall of Text, but it relates to my testing. Also, any pointers given about my gear would be recommended, but note that I talk about my selection a bit later. Big thing that I'm looking at currently is the weapon. And the Gluttony Sword seems like such a waste of a sword, I don't want to bother with it.

OK, forgot to parse the experience, but I'll be able to shortly. Due to getting AF, I've found that I actually HAVE a tanking set (halfway through 58, and all I need is the NM fight for the body; should note, I've already bought a Hauby and it sits in my inventory mocking me for being too low level). As far as sword go, I've found that the one I'm using works fine. Especially now that we're in ToAU areas, I'm only seeing slight improvements with getting the +1/+2 versions (slightly faster, a few more damage), so I'm still using my trusty Tct.Mag. Espadon. I felt getting the hauby was more important that getting a new sword. Here's my two setups:

1) My brother and I own a PC between the two of us. Since I'm staticing with him and he's playing THF, he gets to use the PC. We're running a couple of more BCNMs so I can have my own. We've got the right setup - NIN/WAR, BLU/NIN, RDM/NIN or BLM/NIN, BLM/NIN, BLM/NIN - and we've done several runs. Have gotten three total so far, but have sold two of them. When I have one, this will replace my Spike Necklace.

2) The Buckler Earring I have macro'd for when I think I'm just taking too much damage. Really, though, I need to replace both earrings with spike earrings. It'd up my tp a little bit without sacrificing a whole lot.

3) When we started the party in Gustav Tunnel, we were over camping. I was barely into 57, and everyone else was 56 or less. Fights still went fast, but due to difficulty, I was usually able to use my Max MP gear. Once our lowest party member hit 57, though, things REALLY picked up, and we capped out at 6k/hr. The DD gear stayed on full time at that point, and between Parade Gorget, RDM Refresh, and Auto-Refresh, I was rarely below 100 mp by the end of a fight.

4) I actually found that I held hate better with the DD set up than with all the enmity from the Tank set up. I only lost hate twice the whole night (outside the 'first voke' thing, which was quite frankly really annoying - I can't WAIT for 60 for SO many reasons) to the SAM both times while in the Tank gear set.

5) The Tank Gear set only came on when I needed to maximize my defense because my health was falling quickly (four crits in a row followed by Big Scissors does that to a person...). I actually changed the name of the macro to "Oh $#17" for kicks. Noticed a small reduction in damage and, due to the Buckler Earring, I was able to get my cures off. I'm definitely keeping that earring around for that reason, though. Even if it's the only thing in the "Oh $#17" macro.

6) We didn't have a single death til the THF linked a crab while pulling an alchemist. Would have been fine, but our SAM decided to engage the crab JUST as the THF hit hide. Only the THF lived through that, and the party ended.

Like I mentioned earlier, I've got a Hauby coming and I'm to the NM fight of the Gallant Surcoat. I'll try parsing both sometime, since I'm at the ideal level range to do so. I'll also compare Sushi to Tacos, but I'm not really looking forward to that. I love my sushi too much.

Parse results will be forthcoming.

One final thing - 4 of the people in the parse will be static. I'm partying with my brother again, and we'll have the following set ups to every party we run. Notice the only thing missing are DD's. We should never have a problem putting the party together, and it'll be nice to have some constants to test against so that it isn't always a changing party - the more we can control the better. In fact, the MNK/WAR we partied with wanted to party with us again, so I may be able to have even more control over the variables in the test.

I think I'll start with doing a parse of both the tanking setup with defense food, a tank setup with sushi (Dorado, most likely), a DD setup with defense food, and a DD setup with sushi. I already have a good suspicion of what each will look like

Here, I'll quote myself so all the fail PLDs who think we actually need an update can rate me down again. LMAO

I actually agree. The last few times I've been tanking, I found myself getting a little bored just sitting there watching the hate stay on me. It got to the point that I tanked right through a 700 damage SATA onto the MNK and the mob didn't even turn (flash had 10 seconds and voke had 15).

Only sad thing is, I've played BLU for so long as a DD, I had to relearn timing my spells again. Only took a minute, but that first minute was embarassing. Interrupted four times in a row by a Slowed crab...

What does need updated is the formula for Def how does having 999 def = the same as having 500 def.

The same way having 999 Attack = the same as having 500 Attack.

Not exactly, Attack becomes more and more useless because it takes so **** much of it to raise cRatio another .10 after you reach 2.0 and because of the 2.4 cap the "extra" attack ends up not being applied. Currently there is some sort of pDiff "floor" for when we're hit by monsters. After a certain point of Defense you simply can not lower the monsters cRatio anymore, this is also true with VIT and fSTR. Monsters don't have ridiculously high attack / STR, they have stupidly high base damage. Imagine a Greataxe DMG: 120 delay:250 and thats kinda what the mobs using at lvl 75. This is why shield skill is so great, its a percentage reduction so it cuts the damage regardless of the monsters stats.

SE doesn't need to make defense "mean more" as that would destroy the DDs output, they need to remove / alter the pDiff "floor" the monsters seem to have. Really once you reach enough defense so that the mobs hitting 1.0 cRatio anything beyond that seems useless. Really unless the mob uses an +attack move "berserk / warcry / boiling blood" 500+ defense won't make a noticeable difference.

On RDM/BLU I can get ridiculous amounts of defense, arround 750-800. I go fight EP monsters (without signet) and get hit for the same as my 500ish defense. So it shows there isn't a "defense cap" but rather a monster attack "floor".

I feel more comfortable in a High Breath Mantle than an Amemet +1. Maybe a placebo effect, but it just feels more solid.

I actually found last night that the enmity from my High Breath Mantle was wasted. I didn't use it at all in the last hour and a half of a four hour xp party. And, yes, I lost hate during this time to the SAM twice, BUT I had more enmity from my tank gear (all AF on except body) than I did from the High Breath Mantle, so I think it's irrelevant. Either I would have kept hate at that time or, if not (which is likely), I wouldn't have gotten it back any sooner. One or two attacks on a DD isn't that bad of a thing. I really think the High Breath Mantle is a Placebo and I plan on ditching it as soon as I hit 61. Fortunately, thanks to BLU, my Amemet +1 is already sitting in my inventory.

I should also note that the WHM and RDM started using Curaga's almost exclusively after AoEs because I had that solid of a hold on hate. They'd single cure me from regular attacks, but Bubble Stream and Bomb Toss got Curaga'd. Made it that much more efficient to keep the party going.

It'd also let me play "uber-geek" and play swapping games with my back piece as needed rather than fearing that I'd lose the enmity bonus. I think High Breath Mantle has it's place, but as soon as the spiked turtle mode kicks in, I think I'd rather just use the Jaguar Mantle that's been collecting dust.

If people are interested, I'll post the whole parse file showing all damage dealt/received. I've got a way to filter out all the tells that I'd be getting, to keep some things private, but I can post the raw log. I'll definitely be going over it with a comb looking for stray pieces of information, such as when I lost hate. I will post the results that I get, though.

Only problem I foresee is not being able to get the parse up til Wednesday night. If you can't tell, I'm actually excited about this little venture. And the fact that I find myself with the old-fashined "tanking" gear to compare at the level it becomes available actually seems like a godsend to me.

If people are interested, I'll post the whole parse file showing all damage dealt/received. I've got a way to filter out all the tells that I'd be getting, to keep some things private, but I can post the raw log. I'll definitely be going over it with a comb looking for stray pieces of information, such as when I lost hate. I will post the results that I get, though.

{Yes, please.}

That was my original hope for this thread - to get some numerical insight on this. Perhaps with it we can have some more information on gear sets we can bring to events, and if there really is a difference between tanking monsters in DD gear versus turtle gear.

Well its been found that +enmity is a direct percentage increase in the CE/VE gained from ALL actions performed. i.e. +5 enmity is +5% of the CE/VE generated. Now if you think for a second, swinging your sword, and hitting the monster count as actions, they would get the +5% enmity boost, so the more often you hit the mob and the more damage you do, the more that +5 enmity does for you. Adding +enmity along with DD gears nets the best total hate gained / generated. This is why a DD going full bore with no +enmity will generate more hate then a +30 enmity turtle PLD using defender/tacos.

Well its been found that +enmity is a direct percentage increase in the CE/VE gained from ALL actions performed. i.e. +5 enmity is +5% of the CE/VE generated. Now if you think for a second, swinging your sword, and hitting the monster count as actions, they would get the +5% enmity boost, so the more often you hit the mob and the more damage you do, the more that +5 enmity does for you. Adding +enmity along with DD gears nets the best total hate gained / generated. This is why a DD going full bore with no +enmity will generate more hate then a +30 enmity turtle PLD using defender/tacos.

As always, Saev, I love your advice. I knew this, as well, but wasn't really factoring it in. My point was that my DD gear set held hate far better than my "tanking" gear set, despite having less enmity. I think a lot of it had to do with your point, though, in boosting the amount of damage done (which, as far as I've been able to follow, hasn't been completely figured out yet).

This parse is purely from the stand point of proving what most of us already know. Not to prove things one way or the other, so, as stated, I'd like to control as many variables as possible. If my party members allow, I'll even try to get their gear sets so that we can even see that information. My only fear is in not having enough data to give an adequate data set for analysis, and I don't know if I want to play this game forever. Like I said, Wednesday (tomorrow) night, I'll try the setups I've listed.

Not exactly, Attack becomes more and more useless because it takes so **** much of it to raise cRatio another .10 after you reach 2.0 and because of the 2.4 cap the "extra" attack ends up not being applied.

Eh? It always takes the same amount of Attack to raise cRatio by 0.10, no matter what your cRatio is. Also, I'd like to point out that cRatio is capped at 2.0, the 2.4 cap isn't really a cap, it's just the max value PDIF can have when your cRatio is capped.

Quote:

Monsters don't have ridiculously high attack / STR, they have stupidly high base damage. Imagine a Greataxe DMG: 120 delay:250 and thats kinda what the mobs using at lvl 75.

That's somewhat exaggerated. A Lv.67-69 Wajaom Tiger has around 70-75 DMG. A Lv.80 mob probably won't exceed 90 DMG. And that should be gimpable to a certain degree thanks to VIT. Granted, they do have 240 Delay.

fVIT (making up a new term thats the same as fSTR but for the monster hitting us) has a very noticeable "floor" on it. As in you can't reduce the monsters D value by much lot, possibly 1-4 at max.

I know what your saying about +attack having the same "linear" increase on pDiff, I used the wrong terminology. To get the those insane 700+ numbers, you have to give up alot in other categories, and due to the "floor" on monsters pDiff it will have almost no effect. Same as those melees who can get 700+ attack will slam into the pDiff "ceiling". And yes 2.0 is the "ceiling", but you can get a -.4 to +.4 swing on it, making it in effect 2.4 if your lucky.

Actually I do have a question, for the offensive formula there is a level correcting function (LCF) applied at the end. If we're reversing the formula for incoming damage, is there a similar (LCF)applied to your defense (or the monsters attack). Since things always tilt in favor of the monsters would it just "add" to the monsters attack making it hit harder if its above your level?

I had originally done some testing efforts to try to figure out more about the differences between how we hit mobs and how mobs hit us, and at the time, with some help from testers at BG, we found that, surprisingly, mobs do take into account level difference, and they take it into account both ways. That is, for every level they're higher than you they get a bonus, but they also get penalized when they're lower level than you.

So yes, we do get walloped harder by IT mobs just because. One more reason not to overhunt.

Yeah I noticed that at Helm Beetle camp in CN the other day. Once I hit 52 their damage on me dropped from 80-120+ to 50-90 mostly. I've always known about the level corrected pdif players suffer from when hitting higher level mobs, which gives rise to how much DD's love attack buffs. I'd never heard that mobs had an attack advantage from level difference though, but its very obvious when overhunting. My gear didn't change when I leveled so I might have picked up 1 vit and maybe 1 def. In a JP party the next night, I was lvl 53-54 and these same mobs' damage became a laughable 30-70. Of course they were conning VT by then, and xp/kill was 140-200 with chain bonus. Was lucky we were picking on mobs a little on the weak side and aspirable because we had no refresh, just a SCH and a DNC. Still managed to fight non-stop.

Regarding fSTR in general: Actual damage dealt/taken values boosted/reduced for either STR or VIT are constant. When you look at them from a % standpoint though, they drop off the higher the base damage you're dealing with.

Most DD gear out there has similar DEF to the equivalent Turtle/tank setup. You lose very little DEF going with a more DD type setup.

You are then realistically comparing VIT vs ATK/ACC which is a dead arguement.

With todays 2-handed DD, you need to worry more about keeping hate then mitigating damage through blood tanking. You're gear needs Enmity and good DD status to keep hate. I know pld who didn't go DD but have Enmity coming out their *** and they can hold their own keeping hate.

I've found I've had to rebalance my setup slightly from a heavy DD to a hybrid DD/Enmity build to help maintain hate. The 2-handers did get that much better. The AF pieces with Enmity can be good pieces to swap in/out for macros.

I still can't get my hands on a Wivre shield but when I do the mobs will rarely look away from me again.

Late night last night. Took us from 11:30ish to 3 to get all the xp we needed from 58 to 59. But, before we quit, I dinged into my Hauby! YAY! I'd be interested in comparing Hauby to Gallant Surcoat, but the **** turtle method REALLY bothers me. Took forever to kill things... Seriously.

Anyway, I'm at work and forgot my laptop (one of the joys of getting four hours of sleep), so I don't have the parses with me. And, I can't seem to recall what the parses said as far as damage taken is concerned, but I'll edit this post later (or post again, haven't decided which) with the parses, including screen shots I take of the summary page from the parser as well as links to the parsed file if I can get them up. If not, I'll find somewhere to host them and make them available that way.

I ended up suffering SO badly through tank gear + tacos that I only did 30 minutes of it. Seriously, it felt like I was level 1 again - constantly missing swings and struggling just to kill the mobs. The switch to the DD build was MUCH better. xp/hour was insane, as well. I'll give total xp given in the time that I parsed (I've got to work the second parse a little, cause it actually went about 40 minutes before I turned the parser off and restart my standard parsing experience).

Only two runs parsed for this. I REALLY didn't want to put the tanking gear back on - it just FELT wrong. Gear as outlined in above post. Nothing changed in targets or party during either run. Only small thing that happened in first run was inability to go full 30 minutes as tank. Wyverpoacher Garflenax (sic - I don't care to look him up) popped and started camping in the middle of our mobs, so we teamed up with a 75 BLU/NIN and a 70 WHM/BLM who were going after a testimony for Maat fight. O-Bow dropped, and the BLU/NIN got it. The parse ends JUST after we started fighting the NM, so some numbers are slightly skewed because of that. The BLU/NIN tanked everything but the two hits I took, so I'll factor those out when I parse my result, since we wouldn't have been XP'ing on Wyvernpoacher.

Not nearly as successful as the previous night either. If I remember right, in tank gear, I topped off at 5.3k xp/hr using an Empress Band (which I realize was STUPID - way to adjust the data, there, moron), so when I reparse this, I'll adjust all the xp given so it matches what should be there in the first place. Then, we can get a better unbiased view of which gave better xp/hr. Probably do this in 6 hours or so, when I'm home from work.

Again, a warning: Huge wall of text. All the numbers are at the top, though... take that as you will.

OK, finally, I have information. Remember my generalizations from the previous post, since they apply to this information.

Only fights taking place within the 30 minute period of the food are used. As such, I've only included time from the first hit on the mob (the pull) to the time when the experience is given for defeating the mob. I'm actually surprised by the results, but let me my opinions after giving the results of the parse.

I also have to give my brother credit - he knew the first part of this was going to go much slower, but he was still willing to party with me. Probably because I didn't abandon him for ToAU areas just yet. I mean, really, who hasn't installed ToAU after this long...

Comparison: Due to not getting the extra 10 minutes from the tanking gear, the numbers might be a little skewed, but by looking at the /minute and /hour markers, we can see how well they compare. Counting the full thirty minutes against the Tank Gear would make it look far better than it actually is, and this is against the entire point of the thread.

Damage Taken is more meaningful in per minute readings, since that's how we deal with it - in the moment. Taking a total of 36000 damage may seem like a lot per minute, but it's more meaningful in the per minute chunks. In other words, if you and your healer's are able to handle 600 damage per minute, then you'll work out just fine.

As such, we have 600.31 for DD vs. 388.72 for Tanking. That's a difference of 211.59 per minute, or, a Cure III + a Cure I/II more every minute for the DD setup. This should be easily in the realm of possibilities, depending on your party. Add in a regen effect, and this is even more meaningful. Of course, we're talking generalizations here. Gives you an appreciation for that damage, doesn't it?

The other big marker is the experience/hour, which is really the only way to truly express this value. So, what do we have? 4476.74 for DD vs. 3916.32 for traditional, a difference of 560.42. How much does that mean exactly? Let's see:

At 58, which we were, a player needs 16400 xp to get to 59. Let's assume the player is at an even 0, requiring all 16400 xp. The DD party will take 3.66 hours and the traditional tank will take 4.19 hours. That's a difference of half an hour! Even if it doesn't seem like that much, but it is the difference between using one more sushi and saving it for the next level. Over time, this will add up, and as better DD gear becomes available (Hauby, in particular), and at the cost of an extra 70 mp per minute, I don't think this is really that unreasonable.

Looking at the average time per fight, we see that the DD tank takes 15 less seconds per fight, actually saving about 2.5 attack rounds (I think - aren't attack rounds 6 seconds for most mobs?). It also allows us to amp up the xp/hour, since we're able to get more chains.

The average resting time seems VERY skewed to me, and when I looked at it, there were two resting periods that were both over a minute. ALL of the other ones were closer to 15 seconds, so I'm tempted to think that at least one of those was the result of the two goblin suicides we had in the course of the fight. I can't figure out why the second one had more than a minute wait time. Maybe someone went AFK or something. Regardless, both of these could have happened to EITHER tanking setup, so it's not really worth factoring in any differently, and we'll leave the 41 seconds as is. Just keep in mind that short of those killer single hits and people going afk, resting seems to be pretty close to the same.

The last thing I'm going to talk about is the chains. In both sets, two separate chains were achieved. In the traditional gear set, neither chain broke chain #2. Both chains had leeches interspersed, which helped to kill the total XP/hour, but not significanly, since the fights WERE fast. In the DD gear set, the first chain achieved chain #4 and the second achieved chain #5 (albeit, that was a LUCKY goblin suicide right at the end of the 30 minutes). So, it seems that at level 58, a DD party can achieve a consistent chain #4 (this was confirmed the rest of the night, I just don't have parses available at the moment).

What would be interesting to look at but would take more time than I care to pour into this, would be to see the number of cures that it takes to keep each tank alive per fight, so we could compare MP consumption as well. I'd be tempted to think the DD tank will take a little more mp, but the kills would be faster, giving more time for resting between fights for the mages.

That's all I've really got to say at the moment. If I could post the files (I've got an excel file I used as well as both parses - just remember that only information pertaining to the "food window" of each food against xp mobs is considered), I would, so if anyone has a place I can do that or can post them here, let me know through PM, and I'll either post the files or send them to you.

I should also note that another hour after I stopped parsing for this, we replaced the DRG with a DNC, and despite the lower DoT of the DNC, the entire party improved (atmosphere wise AND total party performance). We got closer to 5.5k/hour with the DNC, but I don't have parses to show that.

You take 66% more damage for killing 13% faster. Overall increase in xp depends on time between pulls also. Your parse shows a difference in time between kills, but whether that is due to Turtle vs. DD I don't know. As long as the extra damage taken isn't leading to extra downtime between pulls, then go for it.

As mentioned in the earlier post, I knew we were over hunting. And, average downtime mostly resulted from taking 800+ damage to a suicide. That was the longest point of downtime, and it came in at just over a minute for everyone to get their mp back and the few who decided to get drinks to come back. All other downtime for DD mode resulted in 10-15 fewer seconds on average (can't remember exactly, I can get exacts later) between pulls. I also found that resting to full wasted MP, cause keeping +MP gear on when getting walloped was a bad idea. Probably won't include so much +MP gear, since it gets refreshed much too quickly.

Also, the body piece was the only piece that stayed the same through the test. If I had thought about it, I really should've tried SH vs. Parade Cuirass, but it was a moot point, since I now have the Hauby.

Scar, I'm aware we were overcamping, but the camp was open and the others weren't quite as available. Not only that, due to bad planning, my brother didn't have ToAU yet, or I would have preferred to be there. As it is, I don't need to go back to the same camp - if we did this good overcamping without a BRD or COR, I imagine we'll do phenomenally better when we move on to the better VT/low IT camps in ToAU. Going back isn't really an option. If it is the only option, I'm going to break my brother's legs.

You're absolutely right. You're also about eight months late on the advice. Thanks, though.

The point was how much even small changes worked. And, the ENTIRE point of that I was using what I had, NOT what was optimal. If I did THAT much better with the SMALL changes, why wouldn't we believe that I'd do better with even more changes? Also, the Parade Cuirass helped with hate a little more than the Chain Mail would have and, at the least, I'd use it to macro in for Flash/JAs. Pretty simple analysis. But, remember, this was done a LONG time ago, and I didn't have the resources for gear that I have now.

Would I do it differently if I did it now? Most likely - for one, I wouldn't even consider using the MP earrings.

It got necrobumped. I'm happy to have it on the top page again, because it's somewhere new PLDs can see it. I'm also happy to have gone through the testing - it certainly made me realize the difference.

It got necrobumped. I'm happy to have it on the top page again, because it's somewhere new PLDs can see it. I'm also happy to have gone through the testing - it certainly made me realize the difference.

I'm glad it was necro'd as well . . . was exactly what I was looking for as an up and coming pld ;D

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Mistress Darqflame wrote:

Sorry, anything representing or remotely resembling a ***** is a nono.

I noticed a difference just switching from Knightly Mantle (my turtle piece) and amemet mantle +1. I hold hate a little better now when I wear that, and a fowling earring for the accuracy+. Also a woodsman or sniper's ring on the second finger.

I will parse it within the next few days with my full dd gear vs full tank gear.